This is by far the hottest market segment right now. Crowded with more than 20 vehicles, midsize SUVs vary in size and type but nearly all seat five adults and offer V6 or V8 engines. Our Best Buy is the car-based Lexus RX 300. Though it lacks a low range in 4WD mode, it's the most carlike to drive and offers all of the versatility of a truck-based model.

Our Recommended choices are all traditional SUVs: the Dodge Durango, which offers optional third-row seating; the best-selling Ford Explorer clone Mercury Mountaineer; the Teutonic Mercedes-Benz M-Class; the utilitarian Nissan Xterra; and the refined but expensive Toyota 4Runner.

Rodeo accounts for over half of Isuzu's U.S. business, so dealers and company officials alike are doubtless worried by the 8-percent sales drop in calendar 2000 (to just under 59,600). Honda's near-identical Passport also declined, but not as much. The losses aren't hard to explain. SUV sales in general are slowing, and Rodeo/Passport's basic design seems even more dated now that many rivals have been recently rejuvenated.

General Motors owns an equity stake in Isuzu, and has started using that muscle to exert greater influence on the management policies and future products of this Japanese affiliate. How that will affect Rodeo is unclear. Though a planned redesign is proceeding, it's been postponed a year, now slated for sale by mid-2004 as an early '05 entry. Few details have yet leaked from the inner sanctums, but Isuzu is engineering the new 2004-model Chevrolet S-10/GMC Sonoma pickups, so current betting is that the next Rodeo will be a spinoff of those body-on-frame trucks. Assuming that's true, Rodeo would move from Isuzu engines to GM's new "Atlas" family of inline 4-, 5-, and 6-cylinder powerplants, all of which are destined for the pickups. The 4.2-liter I6 version already powers the 2002 Chevy TrailBlazer, GMC Envoy and Olds Bravada midsize SUVs.